XX.

THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

The Father of Waters-Its Drainage Area-The Big MuddySources of the Missouri-The Great Falls-Fort BentonSioux City-Council Bluffs-Omaha-St. Joseph-Atchison -Leavenworth-Lawrence - Topeka - Osowatomie - John Brown-Kansas Emigrants-The Walls of Corn-Kansas City-Wyandotte - Chillicothe - Florida - Mark TwainMuscatine-Burlington-Nauvoo-Keokuk-Des Moines

St. Louis-Jefferson Barracks-Egypt-Belmont-Columbus -Island No. 10-Fort Pillow-The Chickasaws-Memphis -Mississippi River Peculiarities-Its Deposits and Cut-Offs -The Alluvial Bottom Lands-St. Francis Basin-HelenaWhite River-Arkansas River-Fort Smith-Little RockArkansas Hot Springs-Washita River-Napoleon-Yazoo Basin-Vicksburg-Natchez Indians-Natchez-Red River -Texarkana-Shreveport-Red River Rafts-Atchafalaya River-Baton Rouge-Biloxi-Beauvoir-Pass Christian— New Orleans-Battle of New Orleans-Lake PontchartrainThe Mississippi Levees-Crevasses-The Delta and Passes -The Balize-The Forts-South Pass-Eads JettiesGulf of Mexico.

THE BIG MUDDY.

THE great "Father of Waters," with its many tributaries, drains a territory of a million and a half square miles, in which live almost one-half the population of the United States. The length of the Mississippi River from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico is about twenty-six hundred miles, the actual distance in a direct line being but sixteen hundred and sixty miles. Its name comes from the Ojibway ( 381 )

words Misi Sepe, meaning the "great river, flowing everywhere," and the early explorers spelled it "Mesasippi." The Iroquois called it the Kahnahweyokah, having much the same meaning. The upper waters of the Mississippi have already been described in a preceding chapter, and taken in connection with its chief tributary, the Missouri, it is one of the longest rivers in the world, the distance from the source to the Gulf being almost forty-two hundred miles. The Dakotas called this stream Minni-shosha, or the "muddy water," and its popular name throughout the Northwest, from the turbid current it carries, has come to be the "Big Muddy." The head streams rise in Idaho, the Eda Hoe of the Nez Perces, meaning the "Light on the Mountains," and in Wyoming. The name of the Indian nation through whose lands its upper waters flow-the Dakotahs-means the "Confederate People," indicating a league of various tribes. The Mississippi drains practically the whole country between the Appalachian Mountains on the east and the "Continental Divide" of the Rockies on the west.

The Missouri River is formed in southwestern Montana, by the union of the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin Rivers. Its length from the source of the Madison River in the Yellowstone National Park to its confluence with the Mississippi above St. Louis is about three thousand miles. The first exploration of the headwaters of the Missouri was by the famous

expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark in 1805, who ascended to its sources, and crossing the Rockies descended the Snake and Columbia Rivers into Oregon. They found the confluence of the three rivers making the Missouri, in July, and called it "the Three Forks," at the same time naming the rivers after President Jefferson and his Secretaries of State and the Treasury. The Missouri, from the junction, first flows northward through the defiles of the Rockies, and breaks out of the mountain wall in Prickly Pear Canyon, at the Gate of the Mountains, where the rocky cliffs rise twelve hundred feet. Forty miles northeast it goes down its Great Falls to a lower plateau, having a total descent of nearly five hundred feet, the stream contracting in the gorge to a width of three hundred yards, and tumbling over repeated cascades, with intervening rapids. The Black Eagle descends fifty feet, Colter's Falls twelve feet, the Crooked Falls twenty feet, the Rainbow forty-eight feet, and the Great Falls ninety-two feet, this series of rapids and cascades covering a distance of sixteen miles. Lewis and Clark were the first white men who saw these magnificent cataracts of the Upper Missouri, and they named the different falls. The Black Eagle was named from the fact that on an island at its foot an eagle had fixed her nest on a cottonwood tree. It is recorded by a United States Engineer officer who was there in 1860, that the eagle's nest then still remained in the

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cottonwood tree on the island, being occupied by a bald eagle of large size. Again in 1872 the nest and the old eagle were still there, and from the longevity of these birds, it was then believed to be the same eagle seen in 1805. The old eagle nest and cottonwood tree are all gone now, and in their place are a big dam, power-house and huge ore-smelter, worked by the ample water-power of the fall. The flourishing town of Great Falls gets its prosperity from these cataracts and is a prominent locality for coppersmelting, having fifteen thousand people. At the head of river navigation, some distance farther down, is the military post of Fort Benton. The river then flows eastward through Montana, receives the Yellowstone at Fort Buford and turns southeast in North Dakota, passing Bismarck, the capital, and flowing south and southeast it becomes the boundary between Nebraska and Kansas on the west, and South Dakota, Iowa and Missouri on the northeast. Its course is through an alluvial valley of great fertility, from which it gathers the sediment with which its waters are so highly charged. Much of the adjacent territory in Dakota and Montana is covered by the extensive reservations of the Indian tribes of the Northwest, where the remnants now live a seminomadic life under military guardianship and government control. The river flows past Yankton, a supply post for these reservations, which being the settlement farthest up-stream, was thus named Yankton,

meaning "the village at the end." Some distance below, the Big Sioux River flows in, forming the boundary between Dakota and Iowa, and here is Sioux City, where there are forty thousand people, much trade, and important manufactures.

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Below here lived the Omahas, or "up-stream Indians, and soon the Missouri in its onward course flows between Omaha and Council Bluffs. Here the bluffs bordering the river recede for some distance on the eastern bank, making a broad plain adjoining the shore, whither the Indians of all the region formerly came to hold their councils and make treaties. A settlement naturally grew at the Council Bluffs, which is now a city of twenty-five thousand people on the plain and adjacent hills, with fine residences. in the numerous glens intersecting the bluffs in every direction. Three bridges cross the Missouri to Omaha, on the western shore, two for railways, one of them being the great steel bridge carrying over the Union Pacific, the pioneer railroad constructed to the Pacific Coast. Omaha is the chief city of Nebraska, the State receiving its name from the Nebraska river, meaning the "place of broad shallow waters." Omaha has over one hundred and fifty thousand people and is built on a wide plateau elevated about eighty feet above the river, from which it gradually slopes upward. It dates from 1854, but did not receive its impetus until the completion of the Pacific Railway converged to it various lines